Title: The Witch’s New Dolly
Author: Regina Watts
Publisher: Painted Blind Publishing
Publication Date: Sept 14 2020
Genres: Erotica
Shelves: Female-authored, Female-dominant, Female-fronted
At the risk of my immortal soul, I’m just going to come right out and say it – if Regina Watts isn’t a genuine witch, then I’ll be The Witch’s New Dolly. I mean, how else do you explain a woman who is so kinky, so dark, so brilliant . . . so intimately in tune with the most personal, most decadent depths of my imagination? I think I may have found my literary soulmate, and given what’s often hiding inside me, that’s a thought as terrifying as it is titillating.
This is threefold WLW erotica, with women loving women, witches loving women, and witches loving witches. It’s a story of sinister Sapphic (and Sabbath) seduction where nothing is ever quite what it seems, including the velvet furniture and headless dolls. Sabine is a weird, wicked, wanton force of supernatural lust, and the way Alma gives in to her seduction, playing along with her game of erotic transference while doubting everything about it is perversely beautiful. There’s a sharp contest of wills there, full of arguments about magic and protests about religion, but feeling is believing, and Alma can’t deny how much she wants to come back to play with Sabine’s coven.
There are so many scenes of intense imagination and extreme eroticism here, but one of my favorites . . . the scene that hooked me, that piqued my curiosity . . . was the voyeuristic glimpse of Sabine dressing a silent, docile, strange young woman as if she were a life-sized doll. It’s such a subtle, suggestive scene, so unlike anything else in the story, but it’s quiet promise excited me. As for the objectification of Alma, her slow transformation into a living doll is a delightful process, taking what initially seems to be a bit of fetish roleplay and transforming it into an inescapable. There’s a clear moment where everything changes, marked by a deliberate pronoun shift from she to it, and from that point on there’s no turning back for Alma or the reader.
Becoming The Witch’s New Dolly is an erotic prospect, but an unsettling one as well. There’s so much to envy and admire in Alma’s beautification, so much to long for in her helpless submission, so much to excite us in how Sabine’s coven uses magic to empower their lust, but the dark consequences of it all are truly frightening. Without getting into spoilers, the application of a strap-on has never been so delightful (or its removal so horrifying), and even if you’re kinky enough to have considered the autoerotic possibilities of a headless doll . . . your imagination has never gone here!
It’s a rare story that leaves me so conflicted between desire and dread, so aroused and yet so appalled, but the powerful beauty of Watts’ narrative is almost as enticing as the beautiful power of the witch she’s created. I seem to say this with every new story she sends my way, but The Witch’s New Dolly is my new favorite.
Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀
My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Beauty in Ruins 